There’s a certain kind of confidence that comes with successfully growing your own food. However, homesteading overconfidence can be both wonderful and dangerous, so I need to talk about it.
When you’ve spent years developing the skills to feed your family from your own land, you start to feel like you’ve figured some things out. You learn to read weather patterns and soil conditions and seasonal rhythms. Also, you build systems that work reliably year after year.
And you have. But you’ve also probably developed some blind spots that could get you into trouble.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’ve caught myself falling into what I can only describe as “homestead arrogance.” This is the subtle but powerful belief that because I’ve mastered certain traditional skills, I somehow have superior judgment about everything else too.
It’s an easy trap to fall into, and I suspect I’m not the only one who’s fallen into it.
Here’s how it works: You spend years learning to do things that most people have forgotten how to do. You develop skills that were once common but are now rare. You create systems that work independently of the complex supply chains that most people depend on.
And gradually, you start to feel like you understand the world better than people who live more conventional lives.
And sometimes, you’re right. But sometimes, you’re not.
The dangerous part isn’t the skills you’ve developed or the knowledge you’ve gained. The dangerous part is when those legitimate accomplishments make you think you’re automatically right about everything else too.
It’s the leap from “I know how to grow tomatoes” to “I know how the world works.”
I’ve seen this play out in countless ways in homesteading communities. People who are genuinely skilled at traditional crafts but who somehow think that qualifies them to give medical advice. Folks who’ve mastered sustainable agriculture but who assume they understand complex economic systems. Homesteaders who’ve successfully created self-sufficient lifestyles but who think that makes them experts on political theory.
The skills don’t automatically transfer, but the confidence often does.
This isn’t just harmless overconfidence—it can lead to real problems. When people who are skilled in one area assume they’re skilled in all areas, they stop asking questions. They stop seeking out expert knowledge and start making decisions based on incomplete information.
And then they encourage others to do the same.
I’ve been guilty of this myself. There have been times when my success with homesteading made me overconfident about other areas of life. I assumed that because I could troubleshoot problems with livestock and equipment, I could troubleshoot any kind of problem without outside help.
Times when I conflated practical skills with universal wisdom.
The wake-up call came a few months ago when I was discussing a complex issue with someone who actually had professional expertise in that area. I found myself arguing from a position of confidence that wasn’t backed up by actual knowledge. It was just by the general sense that I was the kind of person who figured things out.
It was embarrassing, but it was also educational.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Competence in one area doesn’t automatically make you competent in other areas. This is true even though it often feels like it should.
The problem-solving skills, the attention to detail, the willingness to learn through trial and error—these are transferable skills. They serve you well in many contexts. But the specific knowledge and experience required for different fields are not interchangeable.
Knowing how to manage a pasture doesn’t make you qualified to manage an investment portfolio. Even though both require careful planning and risk assessment.
The homesteading community is particularly susceptible to this kind of overconfidence. Traditional skills do represent genuine wisdom that our culture has largely forgotten. When you know how to preserve food safely, build shelter efficiently, and manage resources sustainably, you have knowledge that most people lack.
But that doesn’t make you an expert on everything.
This false confidence becomes especially problematic when it comes to areas like health care, finance, and other complex fields where bad advice can have serious consequences. Just because you’ve learned to treat minor ailments in livestock doesn’t make you qualified to diagnose human health problems. Also, just because you’ve learned to manage a homestead budget doesn’t make you qualified to give investment advice.
Yet I see this kind of overreach constantly in homesteading communities.
The solution isn’t to abandon confidence in your legitimate skills or to stop sharing knowledge that could help others. The solution is to be more precise about what you actually know and more humble about what you don’t.
It’s learning to say “I don’t know” about things outside your area of expertise, even when you’re confident about things within it.
I’m working on catching myself when I feel that surge of overconfidence. I start to assume that my homesteading experience qualifies me to have strong opinions about unrelated topics. I’m trying to be more careful about distinguishing between areas where I have real expertise and areas where I’m just another person with opinions.
It’s harder than it sounds, because competence in one area really does make you feel more competent in general.
But here’s the thing: Real expertise is humble. The more you actually know about something, the more you understand how much you don’t know. The deeper you go into any field, the more complex and nuanced it becomes.
People who are truly skilled are usually the first to acknowledge the limits of their knowledge.
So here’s my challenge to all of us in the homesteading community: Let’s celebrate our skills without letting them make us arrogant.
The world needs people who understand traditional skills and sustainable living. But it also needs people who understand that wisdom comes in many forms. Expertise is specific, and the most dangerous kind of ignorance is the kind that doesn’t know it’s ignorant.
Let’s make sure we’re not trading one kind of dependence for another—swapping dependence on industrial systems for dependence on our own overconfidence.
Because at the end of the day, the most important skill any of us can develop is the wisdom to know the limits of our own knowledge.
Learning to know what I don’t know,
-Nichole
P.S. This doesn’t mean you should doubt your legitimate expertise or stop sharing knowledge that could help others. It just means being precise about what you actually know and staying curious about what you don’t. The world has room for both confidence and humility.
